Diamonds are for Marriage: The Australian's Society Bride

To the collective family mind, a kind of chaos had broken out—a chaos nurtured by unlimited money. It had also laid waste to the true elegance and country comfort of what had gone before. Now everything was sumptuous! Her spacious, high ceilinged bedroom was a prime example of Jinty’s love of the baroque. There were lashings of gilt, lashings of Louis, lashings of ornamentation, damasks and silks. She fully expected to one day see a reflection of Marie Antoinette in the ornately gilded circular mirror. What the revamp lacked in style it more than made up for in a superfluity of riches. Money was no object and Jinty didn’t need a good reason to spend.

There was a tap on the door and Leona turned to see Hadley, a permanent member of the household staff, smiling at her. Hadley—Eddie to her—was a big, pleasant-faced man with hands the size of dinner plates and a shock of thick tawny hair only now turning silver. He was holding her suitcase and another small piece of luggage. “Where would you like them, Miss Leo?”

“Please … just beside the bed, thanks, Eddie. All’s well with you?”

“No complaints, apart from my sciatica that comes and goes. I’m pushing sixty, you know.” He deposited her luggage, then stood upright, looking around him with the kind of baffled awe that most people viewed Jinty’s efforts.

“And you don’t look anything like it,” Leona said, which was perfectly true. “Was that Boyd I heard arriving?”

“Indeed it was,” Hadley remarked dryly, trusting to Leona’s discretion. “A great favourite with his stepmother is Mr Boyd.” A conclusion the entire family and staff had long since arrived at. “Mrs Blanchard’s sister, Tonya, is here as well.”

For a moment Leona looked at him in complete dismay. “Not Tonya?” She felt a silent scream of protest start up inside her head.

“Someone must have thought it was a lovely idea,” Hadley murmured, tongue in cheek. Tonya was a very demanding and unpopular guest at Brooklands.

It couldn’t have been Boyd, Leona thought. She had once overheard Boyd telling his father after one particularly strained dinner party, for which he blamed Tonya’s abrasive tongue, that he didn’t want her in the house any more. Tonya was a born troublemaker, a malicious one at that, churning out gossip and a whole lot of misinformation at every possible opportunity. As Jinty’s sister, she swanned about the estate, treating the staff as though they were invisible. Added to that, she made no bones about the fact that she found Boyd enormously attractive. What was more, she had deluded herself into thinking she had as good a chance as anyone of landing him. Not that she was getting much encouragement from her sister. Jinty disapproved of her as much as everyone else.

So who was it who had invited Tonya? With a thrill of horror Leona thought it just might have been Rupert. He had such an alarmingly perverse streak. He had to keep proving to his son that he was still Boss and could invite whom he pleased. Though Rupert adored his heir, in a strange way their relationship was fraught with hidden conflicts and dangers. Leona often thought it was the ghost of Alexa that stood between them—that and Boyd’s superior capabilities. On the one hand Boyd’s brilliance was a cause of great pride to Rupert, on the other it caused a somewhat irrational level of jealousy and resentment.

Rupert had a monumental ego. Boyd did not.

A buffet lunch was laid out in the informal dining room for those of the family who had arrived. When Leona walked in, golden sunlight was streaming through the huge Palladian windows which allowed marvellous views of the rear gardens. Although there was a terrace outside for extra dining, the informal dining room with so much glass gave Leona the feeling of being outdoors. As the ancestral home of the Blanchard clan, frequently visited by its members, the large room, decorated with a valuable collection of botanical prints, had been set with a number of glass-topped circular tables on carved timber bases, specially carved in the Philippines. Each table easily seated eight on handsome upholstered rattan armchairs, rather than having one very long extension table as in the formal dining room. It had all been Alexa’s idea.

Leona, who’d had a light breakfast of yoghurt and fruit at around seven a.m., found herself hungry. She was at the fortunate stage of her life when she could eat as much as she liked without putting on an ounce of weight. Good to know, but she stuck pretty religiously to the right foods anyway. Fine dark chocolate was her one vice, but she was well on the way to achieving a New Year resolution of only eating a single wickedly delicious piece a day.

At least ten members of the family were there before her, helping themselves to a buffet so lavish that Leona started to think of the world’s starving millions. The best restaurant in Sydney couldn’t have topped this spread, delivered by a stream of staff from the kitchen. At least the staff got to eat what was left over; it was one of the perks of the job.

“Oh, there you are, Leo!” she was greeted on all sides. Lovely to know that people were happy to see her and she, for the most part, was happy to see them.

Geraldine, who was a fashion icon herself—albeit more than a touch eccentric—was wearing a striking high-rise red hat. She jumped up from the table to come towards Leona with outstretched arms.

“Don’t you look beautiful, Leo dear!” They exchanged kisses, blessedly sincere. Shrewd grey eyes searched Leona’s face. “Such a pleasure to see you. You grow more and more like your dear mother every day. Come sit beside me. I want to hear all you’ve been up to.”

Leona smiled back. “Just give me a moment to grab some food, Aunty Gerri.”

From behind them came a feline little comment, something Tonya was never short of, “Yes, do. You’re dangerously thin, Leona. Sure you’re eating right?”

“Oh, do shut up, Tonya,” Geraldine said, as brusque when she chose to be as her brother Rupert.

“Shut up? For heaven’s sake.” Tonya pretended to gasp, then she fell silent as the atmosphere suddenly heightened.

The reason? Boyd had entered the room.

Here was a man dazzling enough to break any girl’s heart, Leona thought.

This love of mine.

The words sprang from the well of truth deep inside her. She couldn’t suppress her true feelings. She couldn’t choose the time or the place when they surfaced. The one thing she could ensure was that they were never exposed. Not to Boyd, whose position alone allowed no access. And especially not to Rupert, who had his own plans for the Crown prince. It was she who had chosen to lay down her heart. That Boyd could love her back in the same way was just an impossible dream.

Nevertheless she couldn’t stop herself staring at him. After all, everyone else was. Some inches over six feet, superb physique, a constant tan from the time he spent yachting on the Harbour, an enviable head of thick black hair swept back from a fine brow, elegantly sculpted bones—he would look good at ninety—and those beautiful magnetic eyes, as deep a blue as the finest sapphires in the Crown jewels. Those eyes, inherited from his mother, set him apart.

The big hush seemed endless. It had to be enormously flattering, Leona thought, but Boyd took it in his stride. Probably accepted it as his due. No, that wasn’t true. Boyd was no attention seeker. He simply didn’t notice it. It was like witnessing a medieval prince coming in from the hunt, the public adoration merely his due. Leona couldn’t help a tightening of her facial muscles—a little flare of rebellion? Public capitulation to Boyd’s splendid persona was not her thing at all. She enjoyed being the one not to swoon. Besides, she needed a shield to separate her from him. It was the paradox she’d had to live with for years. Behind the mask, the strategies and the countless diversionary tactics she had developed for self-protection, she felt constantly starved for the sight of him.

Where you are, I want to be.

Lyrics of a beautiful song. They were so true.

A smile flared white against the dark tan of his skin. He lifted a nonchalant hand in greeting. “Hi, everyone!”

“Great you’re here, Boyd!” came the chorus from the tables.

“We’re expecting a cracker game tomorrow!” This from one of the great-uncles. Playing polo was a release for Boyd and they all loved watching him.

Tonya seized the moment by going up to him and laying a proprietorial hand on his arm. A petite, sharp-featured but attractive blonde, she looked like a doll beside him, even in her spike-heeled shoes.

“Cheek of her!” Geraldine muttered, herself grabbing Leona’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “Doesn’t she know she drives him mad?”

“So who invited her?” Leona asked, gently easing her arm out of Geraldine’s fierce hold. She had her own suspicions.

“My brother, of course.” Geraldine had confirmed them. Geraldine, who often referred to her powerful brother as “the tyrannosaurus” humphed, “Rupert likes to throw a spanner in the works when we all know who the right gel is for Boyd.”

The right gel for Boyd?

“Chloe Compton?” Leona hazarded with a profoundly sinking heart.

“Gracious, no!” Geraldine turned on her, almost indignant. “Go fill your plate, child, then come back to me. Is that stepbrother of yours coming?”

“He was invited, Gerri. And he is on Boyd’s polo team.”

“All right, all right, so loyal. Not that I don’t admire it.” Geraldine shook her elegant silver head so that the little quiff of feathers on the hat which matched her chic suit danced in the breeze. “Matter of fact I quite like him, even if he does have the makings of a bit of a rogue. His father had charm too, but what a dreadful man, running off like that and leaving the boy. Being abandoned doesn’t make for little angels.”

Words to live by.

And then he was beside her. “How’s it going, Flower Face?”

Again the familiar contraction in her breast. The invading warmth in her blood. Even her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. For all her strategies, nothing worked. As always, his voice fell with dangerous charm on her too sensitive ears. Sometimes, not often these days, he came out with that moniker, Flower Face. Each time it made a flutter of excitement pass over her, as if he’d actually stroked her naked body with a feather. Flower Face was the pet name he had for her when she was growing up. When she was his fluffy stray duckling.

She made herself steady, astonished she could do so. She glanced up, seemingly casual, allowing herself to meet his gaze for mere seconds only. She couldn’t for the life of her manage a smile. Within her all was excitement and confusion. Her eyes, had she known it, were a pure crystalline green, set as they were against porcelain skin and the scintillating reds and golds of her long, naturally curly hair.

Deliberately she focused those eyes on his fine cotton shirt, white with a blue stripe, the long sleeves carelessly pushed to the elbow. She could see the tanned skin of his chest, the beginnings of the mat of hair, black as black. Boyd’s height and handsomeness was only the half of his extraordinary sexual radiance. She knew other handsome young men but, though they did their best to engage her interest, they were mere schoolboys beside Boyd.

“If you don’t like this shirt, I can always change it,” he said.

She wanted to slap herself alert. “Actually I was admiring it. Helmut Lang, isn’t it?”

“If you say so, Leona, that’s good enough for me. You’re the fashion expert in the family.”

“Don’t put yourself down,” she scoffed. “Didn’t Icon magazine name you one of the most stylish men in the country?”

He stared at her in mock astonishment. “You saw that, did you?”

With an effort she ignored the mockery. “Anyway, how was the trip—a big success?” She was pleased she was able to speak so collectedly.

His expression of indulgence abruptly sobered. “In many ways. Deals were done, a few swung. Blanchards has a lot of clout, but nothing is as it seems these days, Leo. It’s a dangerous world out there. And becoming increasingly so.”

“I know.” She bent her head. “Terror and suffering everywhere.” She didn’t tell him how she worried every time he flew off on one of his many overseas trips. For that matter, she suffered a degree of apprehension on her own overseas buying trips with Bea.

He nodded, looking down at her hair as it caught fire in the sunlight before focusing on the buffet table.

“What are you having?” he asked.

“The same as you,” she answered tartly, another defence mechanism. One of the things she did to put distance between them because, oddly enough, they had many things in common. They loved horses, country life. They liked the same food, music, books, films, even people. They both shared a great love for Brooklands and they both derived enormous pleasure out of being successful at what they did, finding relaxation there.

He laughed, looking much amused. “Right then. Leave it to me. I know what you like. Go back and join Gerri. Save a place for me on your other side.”

Her shimmering eyes ranged across the large room, at the groups of laughing, chattering people, then back to him. “What, with Tonya waving a hand?” Tonya was indeed waving an unrestrained hand, trying to capture Boyd’s attention. It was a wonder she wasn’t banging a spoon on the table.

“Doesn’t give up, does she?” he murmured dryly, blatantly ignoring the summons. “I love it, playing happy families. Do as I say, Leo.” He spoke with a natural authority that had nothing to do with arrogance. “I don’t get to see enough of you.”

On track again, she spoke with a spurt of challenge. “That’s an order then, is it?”

He laughed—so annoying, so devastating—before turning to glance at the lavish buffet. “You know what, Flower Face? You’ve made an art form of challenging me.”

“Maybe I’m a rebel at heart,” she suggested.

“How could you not be with that glorious red hair?” He picked up two plates. “By the way, do you want to go riding with me this afternoon?”

The offer was so unexpected that she just stood there, overtaken by excitement and shock.

“Well?” Boyd asked, his blue eyes moving lightly over her. What he saw was a lyrically beautiful young woman in an extremely pretty silk dress—pure, virginal and incredibly sexy, which he knew she was unaware of. And for once lost for words.

Silently she willed herself to answer. “I should check that Robbie is okay,” she said, not enjoying the nervousness she heard in her voice. Exactly how was Boyd looking at her? Whatever was in his mind, it was very unnerving. “He hasn’t arrived yet.”

“How old is Robbie now?” He shifted his brilliant gaze to the buffet, as though aware of her inner confusion.

“He’s still my little brother.”

“High time he stood on his own two feet,” he said crisply. “This little brother bit has gone on too long.”

“And you don’t like it?” She leaned towards him, aware that others might be watching—most certainly Tonya—deliberately keeping her tone low.

Boyd too spoke quietly, but forcefully nonetheless. “He uses you, Leo. That’s the bit I don’t like. He loves you. I’m well aware of that. But you’re too vulnerable where Robbie is concerned. I intend to have a little chat with him this weekend.”

Oh, God! She visibly swallowed. What had Robbie done now? “Please take it easy with him, Boyd.” The minute she said it, she realised she had betrayed her own anxieties.

“Surely I never come down too hard on him?” Boyd asked, hardening his heart against the meltingly lovely pleading image she presented. It was high time to pull Robbie up, before he totally ran off the rails. He had received information that Robbie had been getting in over his head, gambling. He was even doing business with a very unsavoury character, suspected of money laundering. That had to cease.

“I thought we’d ride out towards Mount Garnet,” he said, briskly changing the subject. “You’ve brought some riding gear, haven’t you?” If not, he knew she kept clothes at the house.

She had hardly been listening, wondering exactly what he had learned about Robbie. The gambling, of course. The drugs? What else? Robbie could be wonderfully sweet—at least with her—but he wasn’t as yet a really strong character. Nothing got past Boyd.

“You’re trembling,” he said, suddenly putting a strong hand on her bare arm, his thumb moving almost caressingly over the silky skin.

Instantly heat raged around her body. Her skin was melting as the hot blood fizzed through her arteries, ensuring she shook even further. “Yes, I will come riding with you. I was just trying to remember the last time we went riding alone,” she managed, hoping she hadn’t turned scarlet. Both of them had been riding since they could walk. Both of them were very accomplished. Heavens, Boyd was a top class polo player. But she couldn’t remember the last time they had been on their own.

He laughed, sounding particularly at ease, even happy.

It came to her how much she loved his voice and his laugh! It was a sound she adored, yet somehow it disturbed her. It made her bones turn liquid. Even the way he said her name was enough to turn her knees to jelly.

“I’m surprised you don’t remember,” he said, suddenly pinning her with his blue eyes. “You told me you hated me and I couldn’t placate you.”

Didn’t he realise it had just been another outburst against the pull she felt towards him? She willed herself to speak calmly. “I don’t hate you, Boyd. It’s just sometimes I’m not at ease with you. Or you with me. I’m not a fool.”

How could she possibly say: You’re the moon and stars to me. When you touch me I dissolve?

Why did she become so erotically charged with Boyd and no one else?

He was looking at her intently. “I realise I make you sparkle with temper, revolt, whatever. I have a mental image of you at the age it all started. You were around sixteen. You’d been really sweet up until then.”

You mean I was your little slave.

“It’s called growing up,” she said coolly. “Finding one’s own identity. Sometimes you do make me very angry,” she admitted. “You’re so terribly …”

“What?” He pressed for an answer.

“Dominant,” she flashed back with spirit. “The family idol, born to be worshipped. You mock me like I’m a—”

“Nonsense!” he cut in. “Why are you so unwilling to really answer my question? It’s all evasion with you these days. That makes me sad. It’s not any authority I might have that angers you. It’s something else. So far as the mockery goes, it’s the other way around. I see it in your face and in your voice. I can see it now.” His eyes swept over her, marking the tension in her body, which looked so entrancingly fragile but he knew was in fact quite athletic.

“Boyd, everyone is watching us,” she whispered a warning, her nerves exquisitely frayed.

“That’s okay,” he answered without concern. “They’re well used to the friction between us by now.”

“How can you call me evasive, Boyd? Did I not just agree to go riding with you?” she asked, pleased to have tripped him up. Then it struck her. “We are going on our own, aren’t we, or are you getting up a party?”

“A party of two, Leona,” he told her dryly. “I’m after your company alone. No need to bring in the rest of the family.”

“Right!” She tilted her chin as she prepared to move off.

“You used to love me,” he said, very, very gently to her averted profile.

It stopped her in her tracks. It was still so deliriously true.

She moved back to him in that moment, wanting to throw herself at him, clamp her arms around him. Never let go. Have his arms move to embrace her. If he kissed her she feared she might lose consciousness. Or maybe her soul would float out of her body into his. Instead, she raised herself on tiptoe to be nearer to that so dear yet so dangerous face. “I don’t any more,” she said.

There was safety in deception. Much better to be safe than horribly sorry.

For well over an hour they rode through a countryside that had never seemed so luminous to her. Along the eastern seaboard and even deep into the Outback the land had received wonderful life-giving rain and overnight the land had renewed itself. The light beneath the caverns of trees was jewelled, the display of blossom sumptuous, the air sweet with a hundred different haunting perfumes. Riding together so companionably was too precious to be described. Leona wanted to retain the memory for ever. The sight of him, the familiarity and the exciting strangeness, the profile she loved, that clean cut chiselled jaw. With his head half turned away one would have assumed his eyes would be very dark to match the black of his hair and his strongly marked brows. They were anything but—sometimes his eyes were so blue they looked violet. He really was a dream come true.

Out of the golden glare of the sunlight and down into the dappled green sanctuary of one of the many creeks that wound their way across the estate, he turned his head to smile lazily at her. His eyes, even in the shade, blazed. His wide-brimmed hat, a soft grey, was tilted at a rakish angle. Riding gear suited him wonderfully well. “Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“I love it!” Leona responded with uncomplicated joy. “I especially love water. All the time we’ve been riding we’ve been in sight and sound of it.”

“That’s what’s so powerfully attractive about the estate.” He studied her smiling open face with pleasure. “You don’t feel threatened by me when you’re on horseback?”

“I’m secure in the knowledge I could gallop away from you.” She laughed, one hand lightly holding the reins of her pure Arabian mare, as nimble and sure-footed as ever a mare could be. “Anyway, you’ve never really done anything to threaten me,” she added.

“I think I have,” he answered slowly.

The way he said it shook her to the marrow. She had to look away. Curly tendrils of her hair had escaped from her ponytail, glowing brightly against the cream of her skin. “You sound as though you care.” She couldn’t help the revealing tinge of sadness in her voice.

“Of course I do,” he answered, almost roughly.

“Good!” she retorted, suddenly very tense. In fact she was starting to feel light-headed. “At least you know with me you can’t have it all your own way.”

“You think I do?” He leaned forward to caress the bay’s neck.

“You’re quite daunting in a way, you know.”

“Leo, that’s absolute nonsense,” he said crisply.

Her breath fluttered. “No.” She could feel the heat in her cheeks. She even felt like bursting into tears, he moved her so unbearably. That alone gave him a power she could never match.

“Then tell me,” he demanded. “In what way?”

“In every way!” she said a little wildly. “Don’t let it bother you. You can’t help being like that.” Despite the lovely cool of the creek, she could feel trickles of sweat run between her breasts. She had to stop this conversation before her emotions got right out of hand. That would be a very serious mistake.

“Maybe it’s proved a pretty effective defence,” he suggested, as though he had discovered the answer. His handsome, dynamic face was caught in a shaft of sunlight. She realised he looked unexpectedly serious, faintly troubled.

“Against what?” Horribly, her voice wobbled.

He turned a concentrated gaze to her. “Do you remember when you were a little kid you used to pester me with questions?”

“The miracle is you used to answer me.” Despite herself, she gave him her lovely smile, her green eyes changing from stormy to dancing.

“You had such an insatiable curiosity about everything. You read so widely, even as a child.”

“That may have been because I was so lonely after my mother died. You know, sometimes when I’m walking about the lake, I hear her calling to me,” she confided with a poignant little air.

That didn’t surprise him. Many times he had fancied he had seen his own mother near the little stone temple that stood beside a secluded part of the lake. “We never lose the images of those we love,” he murmured gently, wanting only to comfort her.

“She was a beautiful woman, Aunt Alexa. She was so kind to me.” She sighed deeply, in many ways still the child denied her beloved mother. “After my mother died—the way she was killed—I thought I’d never get on my pony again. You were the one who helped me through that. Not my father. He was too dazed. He went off to some distant planet. It was you who convinced me it was what my mother would have wanted. She loved horses. She adored riding. You made me understand that although peril can be anywhere, we have to go on with our lives; we have to hold our simple pleasures close.”

“Then I was good for something,” he said, a faint twist to his sculpted mouth.

“You were. You are,” she said, unbearably conscious of his closeness and the fact that they were alone together. But did it really have to put her in such a frenzy? Why, for the love of God, couldn’t she relax? Was it because she knew Boyd, heir to the Blanchard fortune, would always be denied her? Maybe she had to accept, once and for all, that he was much too much for her.

The silence between them had taken on a deeply intimate turn whether she wanted it or not. She had the strongest notion that the nerve fibres in their bodies were reaching out to draw them together. When all was said and done, he knew her better than anyone. Her eyes smarted with tears. To be together like this always. To have their relationship develop and flourish as she wanted.

She knew in her heart that it wasn’t possible. It wouldn’t be allowed. That was the reason she kept that side of her hidden. Now alarm bells were going off in her head. How easy it was to slip into a dream. But it wouldn’t do at all. Boyd was so far above her she couldn’t begin to calculate the distance. Resolutely she squared her shoulders. “D’you want a race? Let’s say to the old ruin?” she challenged him. The old ruin was what they called an extraordinary rocky outcrop on a wilder part of the estate.

“Flower Face, you couldn’t beat me,” he answered, slowly coming out of his elegant slouch.

“Then I’m going to have a darn good try.” Abruptly she turned the mare, spurring her into action. They were tearing up the fairly sharp incline, vanishing down the other side while startled magpies croaked their high displeasure and wild doves shot up into the blue, blue air.

He was giving her a start. She knew that, not sure if in plunging away she wasn’t revealing what an emotional coward she was. What made her so emotionally insecure? Was it because she had lost her mother at such a tender age? In many ways she had lost her father to his grief. Lord knew Delia hadn’t turned out to be a mother substitute. She couldn’t even mother her own son. Galloping wasn’t half as dangerous as getting into an intimate conversation with Boyd.

She travelled so fast towards the ruins that an old time Western movie posse might have been giving chase. She wondered excitedly when he was going to close in on her.

To her left was a thick copse of cottonwoods, the golden poplars whose foliage put on such a wonderful brilliant yellow display in the autumn; to her right Chinese elms covered in spring’s delicate whiteish-green samaras. Beyond that an indigenous forest of eucalypts in a country where the gum tree was king.

Did anyone who didn’t ride realise the wonderful exhilaration of being in the saddle? Her breasts beneath her cream silk shirt rose and fell with her exertions. The balls of her feet, encased in expensive riding boots felt weightless in the stirrups. Compared to the order of the rest of the estate, she was heading into near virgin country as she veered off to take the short cut to the ruins.

She sucked in her breath as the remaining section of an ancient weathered wall threw up a challenge. The wall was covered in an apple-green vine with a beautiful mauve trumpet flower. It would be a very small risk taking the wall. The mare was a good jumper; she rarely stumbled, never baulked. Leona felt completely safe. She had taken far higher obstacles than this. Taking obstacles had claimed her mother’s life, but everyone had agreed it was a freak accident, not a miscalculation on her mother’s part. Leona trusted to her own judgement.

They literally sailed over the wall. She gave a great shout of triumph, even though her breath had shortened and her breasts were heaving. The old ruins were dead ahead. They looked for all the world like tumbled stone masonry and pillars. She knew she could beat him. What a thrill! She absolutely revelled in the thought.

When Boyd realised she was about to jump the old weathered wall his heart gave a great leap like a salmon making upstream. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he shouted, “No!” In an instant he was back in time, caught up in a terrible moment of déjà vu. Reining the bay in sharply, he sat stock still in the saddle, back erect, but driven into shutting his eyes. Nothing ever really healed. For a moment he was a boy of fourteen again, waiting for Serena to return so they could all go swimming. He didn’t think he could bear to suffer a worse loss. He had a vision of Serena’s body, brought back to the house on a stretcher. The sorrow he had seen. His mother, Alexa, her beautiful face distorted by grief; the pulverising shock and grief of the others. Leona’s father had been unable to speak, totally gutted. Rupert had taken charge of everything, as was his way, his strong autocratic features set in stone.

He opened his eyes again as he heard Leona’s shout of victory. She was galloping hell for leather towards the ruins. Like her mother, she brimmed over with life. He was over his fear now, but for several moments he sat on his quivering horse, trying to quell the sudden upsurge of anger that swept in to take the place of his enormous relief.